Lovelock and Leaky warn for deforestation, palm oil - call for 'biodiversity credits'

Two of the world's most eminent scientists, James Lovelock, father of the 'Gaia' theory, and Richard Leaky, palaeo-anthropologist and son of famous parents, have warned that deforestation in the tropics, driven in part by palm oil expansion, may bring the great apes to the brink of extinction and could contribute to climate change. The rush towards palm oil for biodiesel drives this dynamic and should be halted. The question is how. The answer to that question lies with you, reader from the US and Europe. And it requires you to give up a small chunk of your wealth.

Climate change
Speaking to a conference on biofuels in Hong Kong, Lovelock warned that deforestation driven by the expansion of palm oil plantations may contribute to climate change. Preserving tropical forests is seen as key to mitigating global warming caused by greenhouse gases, as they capture a large volume of carbon dioxide emissions.

In Asia, home to the world's top oil palm producers such as Malaysia and Indonesia, there has been an investment boom in biodiesel plants, which convert palm oil into biodiesel for cars. This has helped to push up prices for palm oil - the cheapest vegetable oil - by 25 percent so far this year. Prices had risen by 40 percent in 2006.

Chinese investors are also looking into building palm-based biodiesel plants in Indonesia or Papua New Guinea as Beijing promotes biofuels to cut the country's dependence on imported oil, although it already has a big deficit in vegetable oils.

Profit and economics drive investors to choose the easiest and fastest crops for biofuels first, in this case palm oil. Biofuels made from sustainable crops, such as cassava, sugarcane, sorghum, sweet potatos or jatropha receive less interest.

Great Apes
Likewise, Dr Richard Leakey said that growing pressure to switch from fossil fuels to biofuels made from palm oil could result in further destruction of the animals' habitats.

The chair of WildlifeDirect called for immediate action and proposed financial incentives to save forests from destruction as one possible solution. He said: "Climate change will undoubtedly impact everything we know."

The great apes - gorillas, chimps, bonobos and orangutans - are already under threat from habitat destruction, poaching, logging and disease. He said that "great swathes" of forest had already been destroyed in South Asia to make way for palm oil plantations, and this had had a dramatic impact on orangutans, which currently number 50,000:
bioenergy :: biofuels :: energy :: sustainability :: palm oil :: biodiesel :: deforestation :: compensated reduction :: South East Asia ::

Dr Leakey said the growing pressure to turn to biofuels based on palm oil could place the great apes' habitat in further peril. He added: "People shrug their shoulders and say what are poor countries to do if they cannot exploit their natural resources, and I can understand this, but it is not sustainable the way it is going."

Compensation
Dr Leakey suggested "biodiversity credits" (akin to "compensated reduction") could be a possible solution. "Being paid for not cutting down indigenous forests and getting credit for that is a further step that builds on the idea of getting paid for planting new forests," he explained.

"It does seem that we cannot stop development, but it does also seem that perhaps we can stop development where critical species are threatened, and perhaps there could be a price added to that." He said that there could be creative ways to solve the problems that climate change could bring, but added that it was crucial that action was taken now.

Dr Leakey told journalists: "Could the great apes go because of climate change? Yes. Possibly not within our lifetime, but what about in 100 or 200 years? "Climate change is measurable and is happening at rate that is almost unprecedented from what we know in previous history, and the implications for biodiversity are there for all to see."

Commitment and opportunity costs
Lovelock and Leaky have given the warning. It is now up to the consumers and governments of the West to compensate farmers in the South to preserve rainforests, which are a global environmental good, common to humanity as a whole.

However, in order to make compensated reduction schemes work, much remains to be done. Some of the problems associated with such concepts are the lack of committment by governments, the scale at which the scheme must be implemented and the potentially disastrous social consequences that can arise from it. First of all, most recently it became apparent that OECD countries, after pledges to the contrary, cannot even meet their very modest promises to spend 0.7% of their GDP on development assistance for Africa (earlier post). In fact, research has found that in 2006 aid to Africa even dropped, despite vows to substantially increase it that year. The question is obvious: if these wealthy industrialised nations - that were build on total deforestation and the massive use of fossil fuels during centuries - are not willing to follow through on their promises for aid, why would anyone assume they will take "compensated reduction" serious?

Secondly, the opportunity costs of compensated reduction schemes are quite overwhelming. One idea is to tie the value of a plot of forest to the amount of carbon it stores. Of course, this will never suffice, since the opportunity costs are much higher than most think. The West has had a free ride and deforested all of its forests since the industrial revolution. This, in combination with the massive use of climate destructive fossil fuels (coal, then oil and gas), has led to an enormous economic development and growth, unparalleled in human history. Deforestation has led not only to mass agriculture, but also to expanded mobility (rail and road networks), and to the creation of entirely new industries (e.g. mining). Futhermore, the West has had the privilege of using coal and oil for more than two centuries, without having to pay for the carbon emissions their use caused.

In this context, it becomes apparent that simply linking the value of a rainforest area to a current price for carbon, is not nearly enough. With Peak Oil in mind, and with the historic opportunity costs, rainforests are worth much more. They are worth an entire era of industrial development. Compensation costs for avoided deforestation would thus be much higher than the value of the amount of carbon stored in those forests.

Finally, compensated reduction schemes may become a weapon in the hand of the powerful, that can be used to push the millions of small farmers in the tropics who make a living from slash and burn agriculture, off the land. If the credits do not reach those who need them most (that is the poor), then the scheme is set to do more harm than good. This means a massive effort and investment is needed to stimulate good governance, eradicate corruption, and find implementation and monitoring strategies that work, in order to ensure the money does indeed trickle down from the bureaucracies to the bottom. Else, compensated reduction is set to become a disaster for the poor.

So in the end, the question as to whether the great apes and their habitat will be preserved is the shared responsibility of consumers and governments not only in the South, but also in the North. The protection of this environment will require a massive effort and a huge investment, to be put up by consumers and governments from the industrialised countries.